


break it off

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And Its Inevitable Aftermath, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Cuddling & Snuggling, Except Not a Real Break Up Because Come On, Happy Ending, Heartache as a Mission-Based Necessity, M/M, Schmoop, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve and Bucky Aren't Breaking Up In a Fic That I Write, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-22 23:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4854890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve doesn’t fault Bucky, of course he doesn’t. This was inevitable. This was necessary.</p><p>It still hurts like hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	break it off

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fault of a crazy week, plus [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va9uOHGZskg). That's really the gist of it. 
> 
> As ever, all the thanks and love to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad) for the beta <333

It’s in public, when it happens.

Of course it has to be fucking _public_.

And Steve knew this was going to happen. Steve _knows_ this had to happen eventually, given the givens. Steve’d always figured they were living on borrowed time, that the shoe would have to fall, back would have to break: things would crack and they’d both crack with them if they didn’t move, if they didn’t act.

If they didn’t run like hell.

He doesn’t fault Bucky, of course he doesn’t. This was inevitable. This was necessary.

It still hurts like hell.

_____________________________________________

“You’re something fucking else, Rogers, you know that?”

That look on Bucky’s face—that incredulous ire, that flame that hedges toward hate: it’s unbearable.

Steve grits his teeth.

“Only heard it from _you_ for a goddamn century, Barnes.”

“Still ain’t got through your thick skull, though,” Bucky shakes his head. They’re on the street, outside the restaurant—there was no precedent, of course, no lead-in: nothing that led from a quiet dinner into a fledgling explosion, just starting to find its feet except what was always going to be their downfall: the first fall.

The last Fall. 

“Look,” Bucky breathes in deep, and Steve sees a slightly smaller man, a slightly narrower chest heaving, but never as it said anything so vicious, so terrible as what comes out: “A man can be grateful, a man can forgive. Even a man like me.”

“A man like you,” Steve scoffs, doesn’t know how it comes out so hateful, so cruel. Didn’t think he had that in him.

Doesn’t think he likes it.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Bucky huffs, and it’s half-wrath, and half-self loathing that propels him. “I fucking _know_ , Steve, I can’t look in the mirror but to see the proof. Calling me a man’s pushing the fucking point. I fucking _get_ it.”

And try as he might to hide the way it’ll show on his face, to shield the way he’ll give and start to crack his mask, or break his resolve, Steve can’t— _no one_ could shove it all the way down, that twinge to the heart, that weight in the bones from that _look_ on Bucky’s _face_ —

“Buck—”

“Don’t,” Bucky snaps, shakes his head. “Just,” he breathes in, for all that Steve can’t quite breathe at all: “ _don’t_.”

Steve’s pulse is a wild thing, a tiny bird that wants to move and can’t; that wants to fly but is stuck. Steve’s pulse, Steve’s heart is going to break fucking free and crash to the ground.

He can feel it.

“Look,” Bucky licks his lips, and god help him, but Steve just wants to taste. “We were something, once. I get that. I _remember_ that.” And the bitter edge to that word, _remember_ , it’ll eat Steve alive one day.

That day may well be today.

“But this,” Bucky gestures between them, more tired, more _done_ than Steve knows the words for. “Us.”

Steve swallows, only to find out that he can’t. His heart’s too close to his mouth.

“This is the end of the line, Rogers,” Bucky says, and if it was full of regret, maybe Steve could manage, maybe Steve could reach for something that stood to be saved. If it was full of feeling, or remorse, maybe Steve could salvage one shred of what they were, what they’d always _been_ from the wreck.

But it’s isn’t. It’s said with damn near next to nothing inside of it. It’s hollow. It’s empty.

It’s over.

“This,” Bucky breathes out, blinks. “You get on your next train,” he tells Steve, dispassionate as anything: “I’ll get on mine.”

There’s an overwhelming feeling that races through Steve’s veins, that tells him he’s only got a moment left before he crashes and burns, and he’s gotta run with them, he’s just _got_ to—

“You do that,” Steve snarls. “You, you fu—” Steve bites his tongue just to taste the blood. “You do that. See who takes you,” and the words aren’t Steve’s own, the words don’t come from Steve’s heart even if they pass through it, caught in his throat and tearing up from the chambers on out.

“See who lets you on their train, takes you on their fucking line,” Steve hisses, feels it all the way down to his toes: “Who _wants_ you.”

The laughter that escapes from Bucky’s lips, that doesn’t touch that cold-set face, a stranger: that laughter is a knife, an old knife, blunt. Rusty.

Lethal.

“That’s rich as hell, coming from you,” Bucky sneers, and it’s a challenge. He knows it. Steve knows it.

Steve can’t help but rise.

“From _me_?”

“You left me on a goddamn cliffside!” Bucky explodes, and now they’re drawing stares, because Steve can feel them, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

“You let me bleed into the snow in a fucking ravine that smelled of rotting skin and stale air and you let them make me less a person and more a plaything, you left me to freeze, you left me to—”

Bucky cuts himself off. Steve catches a too-interested gaze from the corner of his eye, watching them crumble with rapt attention: a train wreck.

Oh _god_.

“At least Hydra thawed me out now and again,” Bucky leans in, all sinister bearing, all bared-sharp teeth: seethes low. “Always came for me, always brought me back.”

And it’s a slap to Steve’s face. It’s a fist around his heart.

“We’re done, understand?” Bucky spits out. “We’re,” he stares at Steve, as if he cannot comprehend how he could ever _bear_ to even _look_ at Steve. “We’re _done_.”

And Steve doesn’t know how he does it. Steve doesn’t know how he makes words form sentences in his head, let alone how they play out, how they take shape in his voice.

“Fine,” Steve snaps right back. “Fuck you, Barnes, and see if I fucking care.”

“Gladly,” Bucky’s sneer is what horror stories are made of; are the trails of a ghost that’ll haunt your steps until you drop dead at his hand. “And about damn time, too.”

Steve doesn’t choose to watch as Bucky walks away from him.

Steve doesn’t choose to dwell on the fact that he _can’t_ watch.

He _can’t_. 

_____________________________________________

The press of footfalls, whisper-still against the floor—too soft for normal ears—shakes him from the way he lives inside the aching in his chest, inside the the verberation and reverberation again, again, _again_ of all those _words_ —

The huff of breath—deep sigh, then gasp, then sigh: exaggerated, theatrical, _beautiful_ —pulls him back into himself. 

“Fuck, but that’s a climb,” Bucky huffs, closing the window as he shimmies in across the sill. “Outta practice.”

Steve moves in slow motion; turns to see that his partner, his soulmate, his _everything_ is really there—flushed just a little red, smiling toothy as ever, and Steve could pretend the soreness beneath his ribs for all the feeling and fearing and the hurt and the loss played out if not payed forth: Steve could pretend it was just his lousy heart, his sorry lungs.

If he wanted to, Steve could pretend.

“Scoot your ass, and share that,” Bucky points to the quilt Steve’s got bunched in his lap as Bucky squeezes himself in next to Steve on the couch, the warm presence of him real. So real.

“Blanket hog,” Bucky grumbles, but it’s a soft thing. It’s a gentle thing, and it reaches out all on its own to soothe Steve’s fears, to make the words spoken once and felt again and again like lightning, like a shock to the system and a jolt to the heart—Bucky’s words and Bucky’s breath and Bucky’s body up against his own, shaped to take Steve in and hold Steve close and bring Steve _home_ makes the echo of their display feel more like a sting than a brand, more like a gap than a death.

“C’mere,” Bucky curls his arm around Steve’s needy, waiting shoulders and Steve goes willingly, desperately, and he doesn’t think the tears have stopped falling since he got back behind closed doors in their apartment, since he’d shut himself off from the headlines and the smartphone videos of their performance on display; he doesn’t think the tears have stopped falling since he fell himself to the sofa, only just missing the floor, and ceased to think; ceased to breathe.

They certainly don’t stop, now.

“Sorry it took so long,” Bucky holds him close and kisses just below his ear. “Longer days, still,” he strokes Steve’s arm, rubs his cheek against Steve’s hair as he whispers: “Had to wait for nightfall.”

Steve nods, and just soaks in the feeling for a few long moments; lets his lungs relearn their task for the rise of the chest pressed against his. Lets himself listen to the rush of air, the beat of blood, and just exist inside the sound until it drives away the worst of those shouted words, those low-slung blows to the soul of him; of them both.

“We’re only gonna have to ride this out for a few days,” Bucky reminds him, doesn’t stop stroking whatever part of Steve is in reach. “Week at most.”

And Steve knows it could have been worse, so much worse: Steve knows he could have been left out of the loop entirely, because _you’ve got no poker face, Rogers, and that heart on your sleeve’s gonna get you killed_ , but Bucky had flat-out refused to lie to Steve, to take that sleeve-slung heart and crush it with his own hands, even if only for a moment, if only just for show—either Steve was in on the op, he’d said, or they’d find another way.

And there was no other way.

They’d run the lines, too—time and again over that goddamn S.H.I.E.L.D. tested-and-approved break-up script, fucking _Operation: Freezerburn_ staged and timed just so—they’d gone over and over the words from both sides, and Steve’s heart had dropped and cracked like the first time every _single_ time; whether Bucky’d been bitching that _I could write shit better’n this, Stevie, I mean, come on, this is pulp bullshit, or those daytime soaps, fuckin’ hell_ , or he’d been coming to Steve’s side and taking his hands and kissing his skin and whispering close _they’ve narrowed it down to three, baby, and they’ve gotta draw him out, it’s the last one, the last mole left and I’ve gotta bait them, I’ve gotta draw them out and make them think there’s some kinda sway in me, that if I ain’t their Asset anymore then at least there’s a chance I can be bought, and the longer they’re lurkin’ the longer they’re in arm’s-reach of you and I can’t have that, Stevie, I can’t_: didn’t matter if Bucky laughed it off or held it as close to the chest as anything—Steve broke for it.

Every goddamn _time_.

And he doesn’t even know how he made it through the performance itself without wavering, without the red from his bleeding heart showing up on his clothes and on his skin: he doesn’t know. Adrenaline, maybe, had to be, because those words were shards of glass and they came on quick and fast and relentless. Those words were every fear, every guilt, every shame Steve knew to hold to all these years, all this time.

Those words were his nightmares. Those words were things his soul could believe. 

_Never, Stevie, god_ , Bucky’d breathed into his neck as he faltered, as he flubbed his responses and made it clear why the brass hadn’t wanted Steve in on the play: he was too close. Compromised.

 _Not ever, you hear me?_ Bucky’d breathe the life back into his lungs, close and hot like the making of the world as his lips dragged smooth across Steve’s flesh: _You know me, baby, you know me, you can read me like a book. You know when I’m lyin’, you know what the truth looks like, what it sounds like from my lips and you know my heart, and you’re the only one who does, who ever did, who ever will and you gotta fuckin’ know there's not a single drop of truth in this, tell me that you know._

And Steve did know. Steve did.

It’s the only reason that tears are the only evidence of his terror, of his world coming down; it’s the fact that he _does_ know that’s the reason there are _only_ tears, and nothing more.

They’re quiet for a good long while, pressed close with Bucky’s hands and Bucky’s lips just finding places to love, and Steve believes in that touch, believes in what drives it, and he reaches for Bucky’s hand and holds on as tight as he can, as hard as he dares for all the times he couldn’t, for all the will that tells his heart to pound.

“I didn’t mean it,” Steve can’t help but say it; can’t help but spell it out.

“Oh, baby,” Bucky’s arms around him tighten, so that Steve can make out the pump of Bucky’s pulse through their shirts, through their skin. “I know, Steve. Jesus,” his lips close around the point of Steve’s jaw and he holds there, like a touchstone in the dark.

“I _know_.”

Steve doesn’t apologize, because they promised each other they wouldn’t, promised each other they both understood there was nothing to forgive between them for words they didn’t write, for thoughts they didn’t think, for fears that never came to pass, not really. 

Not in truth.

Steve doesn’t apologize, but maybe he clings back a little tighter.

And Bucky lets him, clings right back, and they breathe.

They just breathe.


End file.
